After the Islamist terrorist group Al-Qaeda carried out an attack on the two towers of New York’s World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, its founder and terrorist godfather Osama Bin Laden published a “Letter to the American People” in which, among other things, he described his actions justified. While the anti-Semitic manifesto has received little attention in recent years, it has been going viral on TikTok since Wednesday (November 15).
In the letter, which appeared in the British daily newspaper “The Guardian” in 2002, bin Laden not only lists the reasons for his terrorist attacks and refers to the US support for Israel, but also repeatedly makes anti-Semitic comments. The manifesto states that the Jews have taken control of the economy and the media and will now control “all aspects of your life, making you their servants and achieving their goals at your expense,” according to the 9th /11 mastermind in the letter.
21 years after its release, a young American woman’s TikTok video is once again drawing attention to the letter, sparking a new social media trend that glorifies the terrorist’s actions. “I want everyone to stop doing what they’re doing and read ‘Letter to America’ because I feel like I’m going through an existential crisis,” Lynnette Adkins explains in the clip, which has since been released received almost 100,000 views. The influencer didn’t hold back her enthusiasm in her subsequent videos, in which she is sure that TikTok will “save this generation”. Because, according to her, older people are “programmed to think in a certain way.”
After the Guardian became aware of the sharing of this recording, the daily newspaper reacted immediately and deleted the “Letter to America” from its website. According to a spokesman for the medium, the reason for the removal was: “spreading letter passages on social media platforms without any context”. But deleting the post only fueled the discussion even more.
So more and more young people – those who discovered and saved the letter quickly enough – are sharing their thoughts with their TikTok community. Some describe the writing as “eye-opening,” while others question “everything they thought they knew.” The videos, which express sympathy for bin Laden’s actions and even call him a “hero,” garner millions of views and likes in the comments section.
But the interest in the opinion of the al-Qaeda leader, who was liquidated in hiding in 2011, does not come from nowhere. The hashtag #LetterToAmerica is often used in combination with #freepalestine. Osama bin Laden’s anti-Semitic statements are therefore seen as new guiding principles of the pro-Palestinian movement on the occasion of the Middle East conflict.
The war between Israel and Palestine, which was reignited by the Hamas attack on October 7th, is still ongoing. Recently, as the death toll continues to rise, some celebrities – including Dua Lipa, Macklemore, Florence Pugh and Michael Stipe – came together and wrote an open letter calling on President Joe Biden to reach a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.